Category Archives: Uncategorized

My new edition of The Lion’s Share, now in the press and due out on the 23rdof this month, has a chapter on the legacy of the Empire to Britain. That barely mentions Rupert Murdoch, who must be one of the … Continue reading →

Eton College has furnished us (the British) with twenty prime ministers. Two of them have been pretty good, on the whole – Gladstone and the 3rd Marquess of Salisbury. Most of the rest have been rubbish.  One of the most … Continue reading →

Too much can be made of ‘charisma’. Britain’s greatest peacetime Prime Minister – Clement Attlee – had none at all. Jeremy Corbyn, of course, was reckoned to be pretty deficient in this regard. That may have contributed to his defeat. … Continue reading →

Am I a coward for having fled from it all? Here in reactionary Sweden – reactionary in the sense of still clinging on to progressive ideas – almost all the news from Britain and the USA is alarming. The demonstration … Continue reading →

As a lifelong anti-imperialist – well, almost lifelong; I supported Eden over Suez, but I was only fifteen at the time – I have no problem with ‘Rule Britannia’ and ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ being sung at this year’s Promenade … Continue reading →

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This I think is the final straw for me. It’s an email from the General Secretary of the Labour Party, David Evans, to Constituency branches, telling them what topics branches can and cannot discuss. ‘This will ensure that the business … Continue reading →

Speaking of science fiction… My friend Ken recently put me on to a new author – new to me, that is – whose books I am avidly gobbling for my holiday reading just now. His name is Cixin Liu, and … Continue reading →

‘Algorithms’ have suddenly come to be the magic solution to all problems. I think I’ve been a little behind the curve in realising this. Wikipedia defines the algorithm as a finite sequence of well-defined, computer-implementable instructions, typically to solve a … Continue reading →

If a nation’s identity is formed by its history, at least in part, then Britain at present appears to be forming a new identity in contravention of hers. I can scarcely believe what I see happening over the water in … Continue reading →